Childhood Parental Death and Lifetime Suicide Attempt of the Opposite‐Gender Offspring in a Nationwide Community Sample of Korea

Although previous studies have shown that childhood parental death influences suicide attempts of their offspring, few studies have examined influence of gender and age at exposure. Koreans show the third highest suicide rate in the world, and many children and adolescents lost their parents during and after the Korean War. A total of 12,532 adults, randomly selected through a one‐person‐per‐household method, completed the Korean version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview and questionnaire for suicidal ideation, plan, and attempt (response rate 80.2%). A total of 2,332 subjects experienced biological parental death in childhood (18.6%). Male suicide attempts were associated with age of exposure to maternal death from 0 to 4 years (adjusted OR = 4.48, 95% CI 1.32–15.18) and from 5 to 9 years (adjusted OR = 5.52, 95% CI 1.97–16.46), but not with paternal death, after adjusting for age, education years, marital status, monthly income, and psychiatric comorbidities. Female suicide attempts were associated with paternal death from 5 to 9 years (adjusted OR = 2.20, 95% CI 1.13–4.27), but not with maternal death. Childhood parental death is significantly associated with lifetime suicide attempt in the opposite‐gender offspring, especially when exposure occurs before age 10.     

Citizen Science in Post-Fukushima Japan: The Gendered Scientization of Radiation Measurement

ABSTRACT

After the Fukushima nuclear accident, many laywomen established citizen radiation measuring organizations (CRMOs) to measure the concentration of radioactive materials in food to ensure its safety. These women had diverse motivations. As caretakers, many wanted to protect their families. Others saw it as important to arm themselves with science when the broader social discourse portrayed contamination concerns as irrational and harmful to food producers, and stereotyped women as overreacting due to their scientific illiteracy. Some women also became empowered and productive citizen scientists, influenced by the popular idea of women-in-science. The fluid relationships between scientization and citizens’ collective mobilizations make it particularly illuminating to analyze such shifting relationships between activism and science using Gieryn’s concept of boundary-work. Women’s motivations to participate in CRMOs were closely connected to the expanding scientization—the increasing role of science in defining and prescribing social problems. While they shared many sentiments with anti-nuclear movements, women often performed boundary-work in a way that constructed science as irreconcilable with activism. Many saw activism as threatening the legitimation provided by science: a particularly important issue for women, who were stereotyped and policed as anti-science and irrational after the accident. Activism was also understood as a highly masculinized space incompatible with the feminized caretaker role that many women took on, which initially provided the rationale for their involvement in citizen science. The concept of gendered scientization highlights how the turn to science in dealing with environmental threats might result in gendered opportunities and challenges in collective mobilization by citizens.     

Does Conspecific Fighting Yield Conditioned Taste Aversion in Rats?

Running in an activity wheel yields conditioned aversion to a taste solution consumed before the running, but its underlying physiological mechanism is unknown. According to the claim that energy expenditure or general stress caused by physical exercise is a critical factor for this taste-aversion learning, not only running but also other stressful exercises should yield conditioned aversion to the paired taste. This prediction was disconfirmed in two experiments, because stressful conspecific fighting did not work as an effective agent to establish taste aversion in rats.